Why there’s a nursing shortage…

The $500,000 the U.S. Senate approved for a program to expand Hudson Valley Community College’s nursing program may explain why hospitals say there’s such a staffing shortage.

The press release from U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton said Hudson Valley’s current nursing program has “hundreds of students … waiting to enter.”

The money won’t go too far, however. Just 32 nurses per year will be trained in the weekend nursing program the school hopes to establish.

The release also announced the Senate had approved $500,000 for Albany Medical Center’s plan to create a virtual learning center that will educate and train a wide range of health care professionals Both sums are part of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education FY08 Appropriations Bill.

The Senate bill still must go to a conference with the House of Representatives. It then would go to President Bush for his signature.

One Response

The premises asserted by the cabal of monopoly capitalists and their governmental allies are false and deceptive.
The monopoly capitalists, without principale and for purely selfish purposes, have destroyed the nursing profession for the purpose of maintaining short term profits .
Nearly 30-40% of American nurses are now foreign born.
They were allowed into the USA for the purpose of depressing wages, maintaining poor working conditions, making employment for nurses tenous, and for the purpose of monopolizing the nursing labor market such that it would not subject employeers to the rigors of the “free market” system which would force the same to correct the aforementioned injustices.
Further, there has been no sustained effort to address the wide spread discrimination against men in nursing. Men in nursing have no efficacious law nor government agencies to either protect them against discrimination in nursing nor to promote mens’ entrance into nursing.
The “politically correct” sexist dogma expressed in nursing is “men are not discriminated against in nursing”; therefore, “they do not need laws nor governmental assistance to prevent such discrimination”; and.
“women are discriminated against in employment (including nursing); therefore, they should receive preferential treatment in all employment (including nursing).”
This dogma is clearly irrational and authoritarian and has contributed to both the nursing shortage and the shortage of men in nursing.
End the massive immigration into the USA of foreign nurses, promulgate laws that improve working conditions, job security, and other employment conditions for nurses and end discrimination against men in nursing. The same will rationally address the causes of the nursing shortage and; thus, end the same.
I am a male Registered Nurse.